White Paper

Plasma Polish - Innovative and Validated High Specification SiC Surface Preparation

Author

Grant Baldwin
Technical Marketing Manager, Oxford Instruments Plasma Technology

The world’s leading economies are driving toward modest net zero targets. In the US, California’s internal combustion engine ban is expected in 2035, which will accelerate mass EV adoption, and in China, already a quarter of new cars registered are electric. So, even though leading economies struggle to phase out their reliance on fossil fuels while still growing their economies, it is evident that huge opportunities already exist for emerging technologies and materials in E-mobility, sustainable energy and low-carbon industry.

The growing importance of silicon carbide (4H-SiC) components in E-mobility, as well as in other sectors such as PV and other industrial markets, is prompting the wide bandgap supply chain to develop exciting new technologies and processes, customized to the materials’ characteristics and performance. Their aim is to meet the performance, reliability and volume demands of consumers in these high-growth markets. Driven by greater efficiency, higher power, faster switching and smaller form factors compared to silicon, the SiC industry is growing rapidly in response to increasing performance and system-level cost reductions. Increasingly, when designing power systems operating above 400 V, SiC device-based modules are a very attractive option. These factors are taken into consideration with a SiC device market growth projection of 34% CAGR, with the market size expected to increase from ~$1B in 2021 to ~$6B in 2027 (Yole 2022).